some people get a lot more extreme with shapes than I do. I’m not necessarily sure that’s a negative for me, but I do want to get more confident in going ‘all out’ than I feel like I currently am. motion in particular can be hard to be to exaggerate proportions.
harder still is making zany bodies fit compositionally in comic panels. I can tweak and pose my ‘comfort zone’ figures a lot easier than some out there designs. i’m sure practice is all that can help this. always trying.
as always, playing with things to see what i like and what i don’t. in real life people wouldn’t dress like they do in the fire nation (“we all have to wear red!”), but it definitely helps the reader. you have to be a little heavy handed sometimes to drive a point home.
these are some ideas i have for the Otigo people. at this point they will not be the main focus but will impact other nations in the area through their actions and culture. they are a loose group of many disparate tribes and i was dabbling with how to make the body shapes and outfits distinct but not too different (they are all part of one people group). at this point i’m leaning towards reducing the diversity even though I like most of the outfits in a vacuum. ideally i want the reader to be able to fairly easily recognize any of these characters as from the otigo area. for that purpose they’re not there yet. how close should they be to each other? that is the question.
some more body shape doodles. just seeing what works and what doesn’t for the story.
trying to design the clothes hand in hand with body shapes, which i haven’t done as much in the past as i probably should. the clothes and silhouette are basically the characters’ “brand”, i think it helps for them to build off each other. it makes the impact more distinct at least.
panel borders always kick my butt. it’s still easier for me to draw characters without worrying about panels even after all this time. a lot of times i like how a character silhouette looks in a vacuum but when it’s on the panel it clashes with other elements. oh well. still learning
i said earlier that i was trying to be more intentional about body shapes in ch4.
there are a few reasons for this. first off, it helps differentiate the characters better. that has always been a challenge with any non-human character, and other facets like the tattoos (and of course, page-to-page context) are designed to help assist the reader in telling characters apart. i’m not really sure why i was so reserved with body exaggeration in the past, especially when i really go ham when I doodle and make some really crazy looking figures. since i value the characters’ silhouettes so much, exaggeration of the body will also be a huge boon to being able to tell who a character is just from an outline.
on a similar note, exaggerating the bodies also helps from a storytelling perspective because the shape of the character can better integrate with their personality. would a big beefy built boy be a grizzled bruiser? he sure would look it. or you could subvert expectations and make him a big teddy bear. stuff like that.
Of course, it’s not that I never thought about these factors until now, it’s just that now I have decided to be more intentional about it. which leads to the best part: it’s a lot of fun for me to play with body shapes. 🙂 and it’s always great to enjoy your work! God designed me to care about stuff like this, so I better invest in what I’ve been given.
chapter 3 is on the home stretch. which means chapter 4 is not only in the works, but has been for a little while now 🙂 heres some concept tidbits for little ol you. because i like ye a lot
i am actively trying to play with body shapes more this chapter because 1) it’s fun and 2) it helps differentiate characters better. I’m kind of confused why i held back somewhat on the exaggerations until now since i draw wacky body shapes all the time when i doodle. who knows.
the body shapes are especially important with this chapter because it is about a family and lineages and I want to highlight the different generations and sides of the family. the wife’s side has a inverted triangle motif and the husband i was playing with a wide shoulder shape that wasn’t ‘built’. no real reason i picked either, i just thought they would be fun to draw and sort of fit their personalities. i am trying to even have the faces have a clear continuation from one generation to the next, time will tell how successful I am. I will leave it up to your imagination for now which character is what 🙂
this chapter is also going to have a lot of kids running around. more to come later on them (hopefully).
might as well play with some scifi weirdness occasionally. hadn’t really done a dedicated internal anatomy reference, and I would still say this isn’t an official one. 🙂 just playing with some ideas. trying to make them just a bit different from humans to continue the ‘slightly alien’ motif that i’ve gone for.
what is each organ supposed to be? good question. in particular i like the skeleton ideas i came up with, in my mind they are less bones and more spliced stalk-type things. they would be of similar durability to bones but with a different makeup and layout.
when you think about it, there is no real reason that the brain needs to be in the head. maybe theirs isn’t. who knows.
